Cutacre Country Park praised for bringing nature closer to people

Cutacre Country Park in Over Hulton has transformed land on a former open cast coal mine, creating diverse meadows and grazing areas with longhorn cattle as well as redigging ponds and planting trees and hedges.

The popular park has been mentioned in a report which states nature needs to be ‘right next to where people live’

Research has revealed many people lack parks, woodlands or wetlands within a 15-minute walk from home, even though time in nature boosts health and wellbeing and natural spaces help tackle extreme weather, climate change and wildlife loss.

The Wildlife Trusts have urged the Government to improve people’s access to nature as a priority, while a coalition of groups led by the Horticultural Trades Association and the Gardens Trust have called for trees, plants, gardens and parks to be recognised as “essential infrastructure” with long-term investment.

On the ground, Cutacre, along with others sites across the country from Greater Manchester to London are showing what can be done to boost access to valuable, wildlife-rich, green spaces close to people’s homes and communities.

Thanks to the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, meadows have been boosted by plug plants of local wild species grown with Cheshire Wildlife Trust, including dyer’s greenweed – a species that has been reintroduced to Greater Manchester after becoming functionally extinct in the area.

The site has threatened grey partridges, lapwings, skylarks, grasshopper warblers and willow tits and there are reedy, wetland areas which in the winter are “stuffed full of snipe”.

The reserve is also home to reed buntings, weasels and kestrels, and butterflies flitting through the meadows in summer.

Much of the landscape is being managed as lowland meadow for a “biodiversity net gain” scheme, selling credits to support wildlife restoration to developers needing to meet requirements to increase nature overall as part of their developments.

However, the point of reserves such as Cutacre is being close to local people, says the trust’s nature reserves senior officer Stephen Cartwright.

The site is edged by a housing estate, with more new houses going up nearby.

There is an industrial site with warehouses, and a scrapyard next door, but although it is very urban, “you can get a sense of being out of it when you’re here”, Mr Cartwright said.

A view of Cutacre Nature Reserve in Greater Manchester. (Image: Emily Beament/PA Wire)

And he said: “If you’re a child growing up in a school over there, the majority of them won’t travel to nature reserves, we need to bring reserves to them, we need the places right next to where people live, that are scrappy bits of land.”

“If you want nature there, it needs to be behind the industrial estate and the houses,” he said.

Undated handout photo issued by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust of a gatekeeper butterfly at Cutacre Nature Reserve in Greater Manchester. (Image: Alan Wright/Lancashire Wildlife Trust/PA Wire)

Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Alan Wright added: “We want to engage people in nature and the best way to do it is do things next to where they live. This is a perfect example.”

The community is closely involved in the site, including schoolchildren, local residents who come out to check on the cattle every day and around 90 volunteers of all ages and walks of life.

A Defra spokesperson said: “This Government is focused on the things that matter most to the British public, including restoring nature so that we have pride in local communities and access to green spaces.

“We are increasing access to nature and the countryside, delivering nine new National River Walks, including the Mersey Way and coastal path, both of which pass through urban areas.”